


What Death Gave Back

by coffeeandcream



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, M/M, Zombie AU, this is gonna be fun guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 01:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6100462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeandcream/pseuds/coffeeandcream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody was spared when the dead started walking and the living lost their minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Death Gave Back

Makoto ran home that day. The announcement over the school intercom that there was a national health crisis sweeping the country had unnerved everyone, but when one of the students decided to bite a chunk out of his girlfriend’s arm, everything went haywire. Students rushed to get out of the school in a frenzy of screams and shoves, desks were overturned and forgotten textbooks were trampled underfoot. Makoto had panicked, his mind overtaken with the thought that he needed to get home. He needed to make sure that his family was okay.

 

Makoto ran faster than he thought he ever had before, but time stretched and the road seemed to elongate under his feet. Getting home took too long. Longer, he thought, than any previous trek from school. His feet pounded against the pavement and his heart hammered in his chest as he neared his house. 

The front door bounced against the wall when he slammed it open, rushing in and looking about frantically for any sign of his family. The kitchen and living room were both deserted.

 

“Mom?” he shouted, knowing his dad wouldn’t be home yet even if he left work before Makoto left school. “Ren! Ran! Where are you?”

Nothing.

 

Makoto wandered toward the hallway that connected to the bedrooms, intent on looking in each of them, when the sound of something scraping against the hardwood floor reached his ears. He froze. Peering into the dimly lit hallway, he made out a slouched figure, slowly making its way toward him, feet dragging along the ground with each step. It looked like a woman, but he couldn’t see her face.

 

“Mom?” he tried to call, but it came out as a husky whisper. He swallowed. “Mom, is that you?”

 

The only response from the figure were some rasping breaths that made the hair on the back of Makoto’s neck stand up.

 

“Whoever you are, stay back!” he yelled, just as the person lurched forward and broke into a sprint, barreling straight toward Makoto so fast he barely had time to blink before they were right there, trying to tackle him to the ground and grabbing at him with rough hands.

 

Makoto stumbled back, pushing at the woman’s shoulders, and for the first time he got a look at her face. It was his mother. Her hair was tangled and falling in her eyes, and he realized with horror that the entire bottom half of her face was dripping with dark, red blood.

 

No. No no no no.

 

Makoto gasped and stepped to the side, trying to shake her off of him, but she kept hold of his flannel shirt with one hand and lunged at him again, teeth first, as if to bite him. She was just like that kid at school, he realized. She was trying to… to eat him.

 

“Mom!” he bit out, “Stop!” He shoved her away, pushing her into the hallway, but she immediately sprang back at him, mouth open and aimed for his throat.

 

Makoto grabbed her by the shoulders and swung her around, pushing her against the hallway wall and holding her there as he desperately tried to pry the storage closet open. His mother struggled under his hold, and she tried to bite his arm where he held her. Finally, he managed to get the door open, and she shrieked as he shoved her inside the closet. She tried to throw herself forward as he slammed the door shut, and the frame shook from the impact of her body against it.

 

Stepping back, he stared at the storage closet door as the sounds of his mother’s fingernails scraping against wood and her guttural howls filled his ears. She was like a caged animal.

 

Makoto shook his head to get that thought out of it and forced himself to step away from the closet, moving toward one of the bedrooms and nudging its door open. It was his parents’ room.

 

“Ren? Ran?” he said, quieter than last time and with a slight tremor in his voice. “Where are you?”

 

The door swung open and there was Ren, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. His eyes were wide open, unblinking, and his skin was paler than anything Makoto had ever seen. He was completely still. The blood was pouring from his neck, of which there was so little left it was practically hollowed out. So much flesh was torn away that Makoto could make out a bit of Ren’s spinal cord.

 

Makoto stared down at his body, not reacting. Not knowing how to react. His entire being felt cold and numb. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even blink. He couldn’t even scream or look away or reach for his little brother. He was frozen.

 

A particularly sharp bang came from the hallway as his mother threw herself against the storage closet door, and Makoto was startled out of his shock. He looked at the gaping wound in Ren’s neck and remembered how his mother’s mouth had been covered in blood, and he felt suddenly nauseous as he realized that his mother, his sweet mother who would never hurt a fly, must have done this. His mother tore into his brother’s neck with her teeth. And Ren...   
  


“Oh god,” he whimpered, edging closer to his brother’s lifeless form, “Ren, oh god. Ren.”

 

He stumbled forward and fell to his knees before him, trembling hands lifting to hover over the child’s neck and face, not sure if he could bring himself to touch him. Finally, he managed to rest his fingers on each of the blood-coated cheeks.

 

As he stared into Ren’s dead eyes, tears began to roll down his face and his body was suddenly wracked with uncontrollable sobs. He hunched over his brother’s body, caressing his face and speaking to him, trying to… to… Makoto didn’t know what he was trying to do.

 

“Ren, I’m so sorry, please come back,” he said quietly, gently smoothing the hair off of the boy’s forehead, “I’m so, so sorry. I should’ve been here. You must have been so scared…” He paused as a particularly painful sob filled his chest. He closed his eyes and continued to brush his hand over the blood-soaked hair. “You shouldn’t have had to be so scared, I should’ve been here. I’m so sorry. You must have been so scared.”

 

He needed to find Ran. She had to be somewhere. Hopefully, she ran away and their mom didn’t manage to get to her. Hopefully, she had found somewhere to hide. Hopefully, he wouldn’t find her in the same condition that he had found Ren. Hopefully, he wouldn’t find her in the same condition that he had found his mother.

 

Makoto managed to pry himself from his little brother’s dead body and walked out of the room, checking the other bedrooms for signs of Ran.

 

“Ran?” he called, “Ran, it’s okay now. Nobody is going to hurt you. Ran, are you here? You can come out now.”

 

He continued to shout for her as he wandered the house, checking every nook and cranny he could think of, but to no avail. Then, as he was walking by the bathroom that adjoined his siblings’ room, he heard a small sound. He paused and turned toward the room.

 

“Ran? Is that you?”

 

There the noise was again. It sounded like hiccuping breaths, as though someone was crying. He walked in and bent down to open the cupboard doors under the sink, and was greeted with the sight of Ran, curled up among the toiletries and towels, face tear-streaked and red. She stared at him wide-eyed, as more hiccups and sniffles shook her frame.

 

“Ran,” Makoto breathed, “there you are.”

 

Ran’s face scrunched up, and she threw herself out of the cupboard and into Makoto’s arms, sobbing and babbling about their mom and Ren and how she didn’t know what to do so she just hid and tried not to cry too loud, and “Mako, I was so scared, Mom wasn’t Mom anymore and she… she ate Ren, and I was so scared!”

 

“You did good, Ran,” Makoto said, shushing her softly and rubbing her back, “You were very brave, I’m proud of you.”

 

He picked her up and carried her out into the hall, careful to angle her away from their parents’ bedroom so she wouldn’t see Ren’s body. As they passed the storage closet, their mother screeched and fought at the door with renewed fervor, and Makoto tightened his grip on Ran and hurried past, reaching the front door and heading out into the warm summer afternoon.

 

He needed to get them somewhere safe, somewhere not overrun by cannibalistic walking corpses. His first thought was Haru’s house.

 

Haru. Oh god, Haru. He had been next to Makoto when they managed to make it out of the school. Makoto had turned to him, about to explain his need to see his family, when Haru had read his mind and said, “Go check on them. I’ll catch up with you.” And Makoto hadn’t thought twice.

 

Haru had never caught up with him.

 

Makoto took a deep breath to tried and push away the guilt as he made his way toward the steps that lead to Haru’s house, but he stopped in his tracks when he noticed a man at the top of them, shuffling along. He didn’t seem to notice they were there, and wasn’t even walking in their direction. Ran turned her head to see what had made her brother pause and whimpered when she saw the man, pale and covered in blood just like their mother had been. At the sound of her voice, the man’s head snapped toward them, and he darted toward the steps.

 

Makoto was prepared to run when the man sprung at him, but instead of rushing down the steps like Makoto expected, the walking corpse didn’t seem to know that the stairs were even there. He tripped over the top step and went tumbling down, and Makoto stepped to the side as the man landed on the ground next to him, sprawled out on his stomach.

 

Makoto didn’t wait for the guy get up. He hurried up the steps and made a beeline for Haru’s house, ignoring the gravelly moans and screams coming from the formerly dead man at the bottom of the stairs.

 

It seemed to Makoto that they couldn’t see very well, or even at all. In fact, they only seemed to notice something when it made noise. Good to know.

 

With this idea in mind, he didn’t slam Haru’s front door open like he had his own, opting to gently ease it open. And he didn’t immediately call out for his friend either. Instead, he wandered around the house, Ran clutched tightly in his arms, peering into each room to make sure they were safe. Safe and empty.

 

He sighed and wandered toward the living room, worry eating at his gut, when he saw that the shōji door that led to Haru’s back porch was busted into pieces, as though something from outside tore its way into the room.

 

“No…” he whispered, feeling his heart sink. They had gotten in, and they had probably gotten to Haru. 

 

He looked around, seeing no signs of a struggle or even any blood. And certainly no signs of Haru’s body. That didn’t mean he was okay, however. It could very well mean he had become like one of them. The walking corpses. Makoto closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get that image of Haru out of his head, then turned and walked out of the house. It clearly wasn’t safe anymore, what with the gaping hole in the side of it.

 

But as he walked out of the house and looked back, he got an idea. Haru’s house was rather tall, given it’s two stories, and based on what he had seen by the staircase, these things weren’t very coordinated. Certainly not coordinated enough to climb the side of a house. And if he blockaded the stairway, he and Ran could hole up in the top floor of Haru’s house and they would probably be pretty safe.

 

Making up his mind, Makoto went back in through the front door and made his way upstairs. After he made sure Ran was safe, he would go back out, bury Ren’s body, and find Haru.

  
His mom… he didn’t know what he was going to do about his mom.


End file.
